Emergency Exit

It had always been there. A narrow, grey door between the stationery cupboard and the water cooler. No handle, no keyhole—just a small brushed-metal plaque that read:

IN CASE OF REALITY FAILURE

Marcus noticed it on his second day at Tilbridge & Co. He’d asked Jenna in HR about it during onboarding. She’d squinted as if he’d mentioned a dream she almost remembered.

“Oh. That thing? Probably a fire exit. Ignore it.”

He tried. For four years, he tried.

Every now and then, during particularly soul-chewing meetings or when spreadsheets became threateningly abstract, he’d glance at it. It never opened. Never made a sound. Just waited.

And then, one Tuesday at 3:47 p.m., the lights flickered.

Not the polite flicker of a bulb nearing retirement—no. This was a full pulse. The office blinked. The fluorescent hum stuttered into silence. The walls—just for a second—shimmered, as if they weren’t entirely certain they were meant to be walls.

Then everything resumed.

Except the door was ajar.

Marcus stared. No one else seemed to notice. People kept typing, stapling, eating yoghurt.

He stood. Walked past Carol from Finance without a word. She didn’t look up. His shoes made no sound on the carpet.

The door had no light behind it. Just a thin draught, cold and oddly sweet.

He hesitated. Looked back.

Jenna was frozen mid-laugh. The yoghurt was suspended mid-air between spoon and mouth. Time had jammed.

Something deep in the dark behind the door clicked.

Marcus stepped inside.

The door closed behind him with a hush.

He was standing in a white corridor. No fixtures, no seams. The kind of space that felt uncommitted—like it hadn’t decided what it wanted to be.

After some time—minutes? hours?—a woman appeared.

Blazer, clipboard, no shadow.

“Welcome, Marcus.”

“Where am I?”

“The buffer zone. You exited during a Class B Fault.”

“I don’t understand. Is this… death?”

“No. Worse. Your version of reality hit memory saturation and began to fragment. You were offered an exit.”

“So… none of that was real?”

She consulted her clipboard.

“Real enough to break you.”

“What happens now?”

“You have two options. One: we reboot you—different office, different trauma. You won’t remember this conversation. Or two: we let you keep your awareness.”

“What’s the catch?”

She smiled thinly.

“You’ll be awake inside the illusion. Like breathing while knowing you don’t have lungs.”

He thought of the grey door. The flicker. The silence behind noise.

“I’ll keep it,” he said.

“Very well.”

She reached forward, and everything blinked.

He was back at his desk.

Jenna laughed. A yoghurt fell. The lights buzzed.

The door was gone.